Tania Cañas

Dr. Tania Cañas is an artist-researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of forced displacement, borders, memory, and decoloniality through community-led creative and performance practices. Her research is grounded in arts-based, practice-led, and participatory methodologies that foreground lived experience. Her lived experience as a Salvadorian refugee who grew up in Naarm on unceded Kulin Territory informs her scholarship with a deeply personal, ethical, and critical perspective, shaping her commitment to relational and community-embedded modes of knowledge-making. In 2023, the International Network of Contemporary Performing Arts awarded her a Global Connector Award in recognition of her leadership and commitment to increasing global awareness, inclusion, accessibility, and connectivity in partnership with communities. In 2024 she was awarded the prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, where she was a member of the SSHRC-funded Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research project. Dr. Cañas co-edited Staging Asylum, Again (Currency Press Australia 2023) an anthology of plays about Australia’s border regime. She also co-published ‘Desde la Lejanía: stories of salvadorian displacement in australia' (2024). Her written work has appeared in Intellect Books, Melbourne University Publishing, ArtsHub, e-flux, and a range of international academic journals and cultural publications. She serves on the editorial board of the Global Performance Studies Journal and has held senior creative leadership roles, including Artistic Director at RISE Refugee (Australia’s first organisation to be run and governed by the refugee and asylum seeker community), Artistic Lead at cohealth Arts Generator and Guest Curator at the International Community Arts Festival (Netherlands).